Author Archives: WFHB Archivist

Indiana native Otis Gibbs stopped by the WFHB studios for a Firehouse Session before playing the Deer Park Americana Series. Gibbs has lived in East Nashville, TN for seven years and tours Europe regularly. His latest album is Souvenirs of a Misspent Youth. Gibbs also produces a podcast called Thanks for Giving a Damn.

The WFHB Unusual Suspects Radio Acting Troupe is pleased to announce that two of our more popular characters from shows past–Penelope Pringle, vascular recovery nurse, and Oprah Operagurl, the only opera singer in the world to accompany herself on the violin–have time in their busy schedules to join us for “Forbidden Vegetables,” the winter edition of the Firehouse Follies.Plus, special musical guests Harpeth Rising.

Tonight’s program is one half of a collaboration with WFHB’s Books Unbound centered around a memoir of a first-person eyewitness account written by Wang Xiuchu of the 1645 Massacre in Yangzhou, China, called, in English, An Account of Ten days at Yangzhou. This memoir will be featured this Saturday at 5 pm on Books Unbound. The Massacre at Yangzhou was translated by Lynn Struve, and the memoir is read by Eric Rensberger.

Tonight we hear from Lynn Struve about this memoir as well as the historical context in which it takes place. We’ll also get some idea about how to think about the events in the narrative. But this story has two voices. Wang Xiuchu lives the events–but he is one of the crowd, lucky (if he can be called lucky) to escape death. There is also the voice of Shi Kefa, who was the soldier statesmen responsible for defending Yangzhou at the time of the Massacre. Frank Buczolich reads a letter home from Shi Kefa, the man who has come to represent the epitome of patriotic Chinese resistance to modern nationalistic writers. But we should not be so sanguine about that particular interpretation of history. Wang Xiuchu, and Lynn Struve, help us with that.

Patsy Rahn, a local poet who works in the Education Department of the Indiana University Art Museum, introduces her interview with retired IU professor, Chinese scholar and translator, Lynn Struve for Interchange.

Our coverage this evening focuses on the rapid growth of apartments, hotels and other businesses in the heart of Bloomington. We looked back at Mayor Mark Kruzan’s attempts to restrict chain restaurants downtown, Habitat for Humanity’s new subdivision in the B-Line woods, Old National Bank’s plans for Kirkwood Avenue and controversy over giving a tax break to million-dollar penthouses.

The Top Stories of 2014 is a special production of WFHB News, looking back on the stories that define the year in news. From deer to development, education to equality, national issues became local, and Indiana worked to set itself apart. The Top Stories of 2014 is produced by Alycin Bektesh and Joe Crawford.